TOWNSEND -- Lapses in accessing 911 grant funds, officer training and overtime that were never budgeted, and paying for unused services have created a deficit in the Police Department budget.

Interim Town Administrator James Kreidler told selectmen Tuesday night that Interim Police Chief Rock Barrieau has discovered a number of budget problems since coming on board.

"Over the past three years, we have either failed to apply for or have applied, been granted but never actually submitted for the funds," Kreidler said of the E-911 grant. "I don't know which of those two scenarios is worse -- that we didn't apply or that we applied for and were given the money and never asked to have it sent to town."

Expenses were incurred against the missing grant funds, Kreidler said, including about $4,000 in chairs for dispatchers, as well as some training sessions earlier in the year.

Kreidler initially estimated the total resulting loss to the taxpayers to be in excess of $100,000, but said Barrieau was able to recoup this year's $35,000 grant funds at short notice.

"So while we can't recoup the damage that's been done in the past, at least we've been able to capture this year's," Kreidler said.

There was also 911 training-grant money left on the table in previous fiscal years, he said. According to an email he provided from the state 911 Department, the town failed to apply for the money in fiscal 2015 and did not submit any reimbursements in fiscal 2014 or 2013.

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Kreidler said the police communications director was responsible for the grant for the last two years, and before that, it was the chief.

He said Robert DeMoura changed overtime and training policies while serving as interim chief in Townsend before Barrieau. Those changes resulted in additional, unanticipated costs.

Kreidler said former Police Chief Erving Marshall had assumed in his budget that most officer training would occur online through the Municipal Police Institute while officers were on duty. DeMoura, who is also the former police chief in Fitchburg, chose instead to send officers to the academy in Boylston for training, Kreidler said.

"I don't fault Chief DeMoura, philosophically, for doing that because it does make better sense to have the ability to be interacting with other members of law enforcement," Kreidler said. "But it wasn't accounted for in the budget."

He said the police budget was made with the assumption that shifts would be staffed with three officers, and that absences would not be filled through overtime. DeMoura directed that all shifts be filled with three officers and to fill the third shift via overtime call-in when necessary, Kreidler said.

He said Barrieau also discovered that the department was paying for services it was not using for more than a year. One was a copier, sitting unused in the boiler room, at a cost of $2,000 per year, Kreidler said. Another was a service that identified the location of public-safety vehicles in real time, at a cost of $2,800 per year, he said. The equipment that paired with that software was traded in with the old cruisers when new vehicles were purchased, Kreidler said, and now none of the police vehicles have it.

Kreidler said he was advised Tuesday that a Verizon bill was discovered that showed several modems, billed for between $20 and $50 per month, that had no data being recorded. He estimated that has cost the town $1,500 to $2,000 in unnecessary expenses over the course of the year.

Kreidler said he could not provide the total deficit amount for the Police Department because it's still being determined. He said Barrieau and his executive assistant are still investigating the department's finances.

Kreidler said the total fiscal 2016 deficit is more than $100,000, thanks to an error in former Town Administrator Andrew Sheehan's master budget spreadsheet.

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